Nicola Sturgeon takes political fantasy to new heights

It was courteous of our new Prime Minister, within hours of her coronation, to visit Edinburgh to see Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. Mrs Sturgeon, who we are routinely assured is a consummate politician who positively demands our unequivocal admiration, did not repay that courtesy. Instead, she spent the ensuing days mendaciously implying that she had some sort of veto over the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union. When even her usual toadies in the mass media struggled to believe this fantasy, she started peddling the idea – also completely unsubstantiated – that the rest of the UK could leave the EU while Scotland remained in.

Although it is not unknown for politicians to be fantasists – Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott seriously seem to think that millions of people will one day let them run the country, for example – Mrs Sturgeon has taken the art form to a new level. In September 2014, Scots voted by 55 per cent to 45 per cent to stay in the United Kingdom. Mrs Sturgeon and her friends decided to ignore this democratic decision. It was useful preparation for them, and particularly for her, for choosing to ignore Britain’s equally democratic decision to leave the European Union, about which she has been blustering for the last month.

Pleasure to meet Chief Minister of Gibraltar @FabianPicardo today to discuss how we can work together to keep our countries in the EU.

To try to construct a domestic and, now, a foreign policy for an independent country that does not exist should cause us to question Mrs Sturgeon’s sanity. Instead, much of the media treats her as though she is talking perfect sense. It is as if Ed Miliband, having lost the 2015 election, were going around pretending he was prime minister, claiming he could take key decisions, inviting himself to chat to foreign potentates on that basis, and the media finding such conduct quite normal.

London, like Scotland, voted to stay in the EU – demonstrating how out of touch it is with the rest of England. There were hysterical calls for a second referendum, and then, when it became clear that was not going to happen, for effectively a separate citizenship for Londoners. We have heard no more of that either. However painful for a minority of them, the English ruling elite are slowly realising that the world hasn’t ended, and isn’t going to end, following Brexit. The minority ruling elite in Scotland, sadly for their sanity and credibility, show no signs of doing the same.

Watch | Nicola Sturgeon admits she has a veto over Brexit timing

00:28

Whenever I’ve written about Scotland I’ve been inundated by emails from readers there reminding me, quite rightly, that although that country appears to be a one-party state, the public are far from unanimous in support of Mrs Sturgeon. Twice in recent weeks that has been brought home. First, the Conservative Party in Scotland was so revived in the assembly elections in May that it is now the official opposition there, giving Scots a viable alternative for the first time in years. Previously, the choice had been between two sorts of Bolshevism – the SNP’s sort and Labour’s sort. Now, Scots can choose between Mrs Sturgeon’s Bolshevism, which she conducts with the honesty and realism one associates with hard-line Left-wing dictatorships, and a progressive, individualistic, free-market conservatism championed by Ruth Davidson. The first cracks in the one-party state have appeared.

Second, early briefings that 70 or 75 per cent of Scots would vote to stay in the EU proved wrong: the final vote was 62 to remain against 38 to leave. It was a good majority, but not the overwhelming vote of confidence nationalists had confidently predicted. It, too, shows how far Mrs Sturgeon’s writ actually runs, and is another reflection of how unimpressed the Scottish people are with the crisis-hit NHS and the under-performing education system over which she presides.

The type of nationalism she has developed is, as well as being rooted now in fantasy, deeply unpleasant. Intimidation was rife during the 2014 referendum. Xenophobia – targeted against England – is commonplace in the SNP’s ranks. It was unfortunate that as many as 45 per cent of Scots were taken in by this two years ago. It was even more unfortunate that they swallowed it without Alex Salmond, the then leader, being able to tell them what currency an independent Scotland would have, whether or not it would remain in the European Union, and how it would pay its way.

Watch | Sturgeon: Many more people may back independence now

01:45

Nothing has changed. Mrs Sturgeon rumbles on like a minor volcano, spewing out sporadic threats of a second referendum: but it is a referendum she is powerless to call, since that right rests with Westminster. She can always make a unilateral declaration of independence, if she wishes to sign her own political death warrant and humiliate Scotland internationally. She knows that if she managed to take Scotland out of the UK she would have to establish a Scottish currency, because the sterling zone would want nothing to do with her. With oil at $46 a barrel and its main banks effectively wholly-owned subsidiaries of the English taxpayer, Scotland has no visible means of support. And she knows, too, that the EU will not encourage her fantasies about the Union providing a safe haven for an independent Scotland, since the Spanish will veto anything that might encourage Catalonia to break away from Madrid. As with so much else, this aspect of Mrs Sturgeon’s view of the future is based solidly on sheer fantasy.

She is behaving as though she is already running an independent country that, thanks to its dependence on English money, can do as it likes in the world. She isn’t, and it can’t: a reality appreciated by a growing number of Scots, who are nowhere near as stupid or deluded as she would like to think they are. She had better get used to the idea of leaving the EU, and of going along with the decisions of the political union that her people, less than two years ago, elected to remain part of. And if there is much more of her absurd posturing, she is going to become a national laughing-stock.